G2A confirms stolen game key sales, pays $40,000 to Factorio devs

[Pickles von Brine]

 

Quote

After years of controversy, gray-market game key marketplace G2A has admitted to what it has long been accused of by angry game developers: profiting from the sale of illegitimate download keys—at least in one specific instance.

In a blog post yesterday, G2A confirmed that 198 copies of Factorio sold on G2A in early 2016 were indeed obtained illegitimately. G2A says it will pay Factorio developer Wube 10 times the "bank-initiated refund costs" it incurred for those fraudulent purchases, or roughly $40,000.

But the discovery and confirmation of the fraudulent keys in this one specific case come only after years of controversy and argument over the role of the marketplace.

Source

Well, not surprising honestly. I am sure many of you may have known G2A was a grey market to begin with. Those prices were suspiciously too low to begin with. I a lot of devs were not happy with them doing what they did. It is good to see the win for the little guys on this one. 

[GDRRiley]

I'm happy to see factorio devs get money.

And this is why I don't use G2A

[blu4]

$39,600 to be exact

[Aereldor]

I don't know why so many people used G2A when there's a much easier, completely legal way to do this. 

Find a friend in a country where Steam is subsisidized - consistently good in Ukraine, China, Argentina, Brazil, India. 

Set up gameshare, send $ over venmo/paypal/messenger even

Profit

[wANKER]

How do the keys actually get 'stolen'? 

 

Or is it just that they're bought with stolen card details etc.?

[Touch My Hamm]

I would never buy from a site like G2A and any mention of them is free publicity to me. Developers hate these sites and there have been some that would rather you pirate the game than purchase from these sites. https://www.pcgamer.com/developers-tell-people-to-pirate-their-games-instead-of-using-g2a/

 

"Mike Rose noted that a search for his games placed G2A ads for them above the publisher's own link. "We make zero money on our games if people buy them through ads," he said. He recommended people considering buying a game through G2A just pirate it instead."

 

When you see a product the price is usually set on what the developers require to make their investment back plus make money as we all do in this world. If people are not willing to pay full price they can wait for a sale or they could not purchase the product (this isnt including everything on earth just some software/videogame that are not old cartrage used market). But thats more my opinion as if I were a game developer I would feel exhausted trying to put resources and money into fighting these gray markets that can cause credit chargebacks which hurt companies financially. 

 

[Statik]

4 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

I don't know why so many people used G2A when there's a much easier, completely legal way to do this. 

Find a friend in a country where Steam is subsisidized - consistently good in Ukraine, China, Argentina, Brazil, India. 

Set up gameshare, send $ over venmo/paypal/messenger even

Profit

Fair option, but the biggest downside is finding someone in a foreign country that you trust enough to send money to/share an account with. I

[dizmo]

This shouldn't make them look like any kind of good guy. If anything, they should have returned the charge back fees as well as the lost revenue from the game being sold.

 

6 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

I don't know why so many people used G2A when there's a much easier, completely legal way to do this. 
Find a friend in a country where Steam is subsisidized - consistently good in Ukraine, China, Argentina, Brazil, India. 
Set up gameshare, send $ over venmo/paypal/messenger even
Profit

While that might be technically legal, it's immoral.

6 minutes ago, wANKER said:

How do the keys actually get 'stolen'? 

 

Or is it just that they're bought with stolen card details etc.?

They ask for review keys, and then sell them.

As well as stolen credit cards, etc.

[HarryNyquist]

Wow, I am just shocked by this. Just simply shocked. I never would have believed that a reputable company like G2A would have somehow obtained keys for a game illegitimately. I would never have guessed. Wow.

 

[Aereldor]

14 minutes ago, Statik said:

Fair option, but the biggest downside is finding someone in a foreign country that you trust enough to send money to/share an account with. I

Good point. I'm from India, lived in NY for years, I just sign in to my friends' PCs and share my library. One time he wanted to buy a game I owned so we could play together - a title incompatible with steam remote play - so I bought it for him here on a second account, deleted the payment info, and just gave him the login details. This won't work with strangers, the guy in question was my college roommate.

 

[Aereldor]

14 minutes ago, dizmo said:

While that might be technically legal, it's immoral.

A little bit. Beats the immorality of the good old yo-ho... 

[dizmo]

13 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

A little bit. Beats the immorality of the good old yo-ho... 

Or, you know, pay the money for the game. That's always an option.

[suicidalfranco]

36 minutes ago, dizmo said:

While that might be technically legal, it's immoral.

how?

is this immoral too?

[Aereldor]

5 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Or, you know, pay the money for the game. That's always an option.

Which they would... Just in a different currency at a lower rate. Call it immoral, but it's better than pirating the game. Games are also expensive, and with most popular titles, frequently go on sale to lower prices than regional subsidizations anyway.

[dizmo]

2 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

how?

is this immoral too?

Not the same thing.

2 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

Which they would... Just in a different currency at a lower rate. Call it immoral, but it's better than pirating the game. Games are also expensive, and with most popular titles, frequently go on sale to lower prices than regional subsidizations anyway.

If everyone started doing that, then you'd either see the pricing of the games in those countries drastically increase, or stop entirely.

[suicidalfranco]

1 minute ago, dizmo said:

Not the same thing.

literally the exact same thing since he is talking about Steam's gameshare feature 

[Brooksie359]

59 minutes ago, dizmo said:

This shouldn't make them look like any kind of good guy. If anything, they should have returned the charge back fees as well as the lost revenue from the game being sold.

 

While that might be technically legal, it's immoral.

They ask for review keys, and then sell them.

As well as stolen credit cards, etc.

Why would that be immoral? I mean the company was already willing to sell it at that price in that market so it's not like they aren't getting an amount they wouldn't accept for the game. If anything its sorta immoral to charge some people more than others for the same product. 

[dizmo]

3 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Why would that be immoral? I mean the company was already willing to sell it at that price in that market so it's not like they aren't getting an amount they wouldn't accept for the game. If anything its sorta immoral to charge some people more than others for the same product. 

They expect a certain amount from sales. They're willing to give it to people in areas that aren't as well off for a lower price so they can enjoy the product. Then you, who can pay the full amount, gets it for the price meant for those who are impoverished. If loads of people started doing that, they'd just raise prices there as well, and those people would miss out. There are so many cheap people out there that can easily afford to pay full price for a product they're going to get more than fair value out of.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Aereldor said:

I don't know why so many people used G2A when there's a much easier, completely legal way to do this. 

Find a friend in a country where Steam is subsisidized - consistently good in Ukraine, China, Argentina, Brazil, India. 

Set up gameshare, send $ over venmo/paypal/messenger even

Profit

That's not "subsidized", and you can't buy in any currency any more other than your own, and Steam will flip out on you if you do.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6627-QSNM-5276

 

Which I can't emphasize enough how stupid this region lock is, since I would rather pay the USD rate than have to do two currency conversions to pay it in local currency.

 

Other countries, some developers have opted to lower the price for some customers, which is known as price discrimination and is illegal in the US under some circumstances which would be hard to apply in a digital space since the cost of intangible goods is always zero and is always an infinite resource. Stadia for example, charges FAR more than Steam does, and Epic charges less than Steam does for the same games, in USD than CAD.

 

Epic

 

Steam:

 

Stadia:

 

PS4 (note Special edition, not Ultimate edition):

Steam and Epic's Special edition is 99.99 on promo for 66.99. Stadia is 99.99 without any promo. In USD it's 79.99 on the PS store on sale for $35.99.

 

So just for the peanut gallery, the official bank of canada exchange rate for today is 1.3550 :

So

USD 35.99 * 1.3550 = CAD 48.76, a difference of $18.23 more being charged

USD 79.99 * 1.3550 = CAD 108.38, a difference of $8.39 more being charged

 

Those foreign keys, are supposed to be for localized versions of the software, but as everyone in Canada knows, EVERYTHING, games, music, tv shows, films, cartoons, comics, are exactly the same as the US version, right down to cover art. The only thing that a "Canadian" physical version might have different is a sticker on it with the french title, since Quebec has asinine language police that love to destroy branding.

 

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, dizmo said:

They expect a certain amount from sales. They're willing to give it to people in areas that aren't as well off for a lower price so they can enjoy the product. Then you, who can pay the full amount, gets it for the price meant for those who are impoverished. If loads of people started doing that, they'd just raise prices there as well, and those people would miss out. There are so many cheap people out there that can easily afford to pay full price for a product they're going to get more than fair value out of.

That's such a cop out. If they want to sell it for less than they should do so everywhere because that would be fair. Not to mention that if someone is impoverished they wouldn't have the money to build a pc to pay the game on. Also I why wouldn't the same apply to people who can't afford it in the US? If someone in the US can't afford the full price should they get the lower rate? Should it be arbitrary applied based someone being from a region of the world? Honestly I find it funny that people think that companies doing regional pricing isn't wrong. 

[thorhammerz]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

So just for the peanut gallery, the official bank of canada exchange rate for today is 1.3550 

You should really check which rate (daily vs. monthly vs. yearly) you're looking at. 

 

That's before applying the foreign exchange spread charged to retail consumers of some 2.5-3%, so most people will probably see a rate somewhere around 1.42-1.45 at the moment (CADUSD currently rangebound between ~0.705 to ~0.72 until further market catalysts). 

 

Spoiler

Unless of course, you're using a Credit Card like the Rogers Bank Mastercard that provides a rebate on the spread, or have otherwise exchanged the CAD to USD via roundabout methods such as Norbert's Gambit.

 

[dalekphalm]

47 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

That's such a cop out. If they want to sell it for less than they should do so everywhere because that would be fair. Not to mention that if someone is impoverished they wouldn't have the money to build a pc to pay the game on. Also I why wouldn't the same apply to people who can't afford it in the US? If someone in the US can't afford the full price should they get the lower rate? Should it be arbitrary applied based someone being from a region of the world? Honestly I find it funny that people think that companies doing regional pricing isn't wrong. 

Regional pricing is due to MASSIVE income

disparity across the globe. 
 

There are countries where someone making a somewhat decent local wage earns less per year than an American living on basic assistance. 
 

Regional pricing is also in large part designed to reduce piracy in those countries, as without it, very few would be able to afford buying games. 
 

In theory regional pricing shouldn’t need to exist. But it’s a good solution to a real problem.

 

Besides, if regional pricing was eliminated, prices wouldn’t be the low regional pricing. It

would end up being significantly more expensive for those countries with low incomes. 
 

Sure it might drop a bit for Europeans and Americans, but not by much, and it would ensure that most low income countries would not be able to afford new games anymore. 

[AshRiver]

Anybody knows good sites selling games key legit at discount similar to G2A and Kinguin?

[Bombastinator]

So “we’re gonna sell stolen keys and if you spend half a million on a 2 year legal battle to prove we did it we’ll pay up only the fraction of what it cost to prove it that we never legitimately made anyway”. WTF
 

back in the 1970s Coca-Cola did this.  They simply made all change returns on their machines non functional, and if anyone ever had the glands to complain often enough they would send them their money back (a quarter) in a little white box filled with cotton.  I actually got one of those things as a kid.  They made millions stealing from customers.

[Nas]

2 minutes ago, AshRiver said:

Anybody knows good sites selling games key legit at discount similar to G2A and Kinguin?

Green Man Gaming and Humblebundle come to mind.